GRAND RAPIDS -- Robb Johnston wondered how he'd break the news to his girlfriend that he damaged her car, driving across the state to Grand Rapids to meet a deadline.

When he learned his illustration would be on the cover of today's Grand Rapids Press, that made the mishap a little easier.

Johnston, 26, submitted the illustration to win the "PressPrize."

"I was thrilled," Johnston said. "It was a very, very big sense of relief."

His watercolor and pen-and-ink design captures the flavor of ArtPrize 2010, which opens today with more than 1,700 artists displaying their work in 191 venues in downtown Grand Rapids over the next 19 days.

"I wanted to do something colorful, and I wanted to feature the city and the people heading toward this spectacle that the city had going on," said Johnson, a 2002 graduate of Rockford High School.

A 2006 graduate of James Madison College at Michigan State University, Johnston majored in international relations in college but continued to nurture his passion for visual arts.

His design comes from an original idea for a children's book he's been working on, inspired by a year and a half he spent in Japan, teaching English.

The book's working title is, "The Wood Cutter and the Most Beautiful Tree."

While living in Ann Arbor last fall, Johnston returned home to see some of the first ArtPrize exhibition, which drew worldwide attention for both its throngs of viewers as well as its lucrative $450,000 in prize money.

"It had been on the radio and talked up, and I knew I had to go home to check it out," he recalled. "Art was in the streets and climbing the walls, and it really blew me away. It all was very, very inspiring."

Last year, The Press published a full-page illustration by chief graphic designer Steve Young on opening day of the first ArtPrize competition. In August, Paul Keep, editor of The Press, announced the public competition to design the cover of today's Press for opening day of the 2010 exhibition and competition founded by entrepreneur Rick DeVos.

Now living in Ypsilanti, Johnston was encouraged to enter the contest by his sister, Selina Johnston, a first-year, fourth-grade teacher in the West Ottawa school district.

Working against the clock to meet the deadline, Johnston drove his submission to Grand Rapids after work on Sept. 10 when the oil pan on his girlfriend's car was punctured.

"After the call, it all seemed to be worth the hassle and the headache," he said. "Thankfully, I didn't have to take the engine out or anything."